NAVY SEALS (AMI)

Back in pre-history, if there was one thing worse than an Ocean arcade conversion (see the terrible C64 versions of Operation Thunderbolt and Chase HQ) it was likely the advent of an Ocean movie tie-in. Batman: The Movie is perhaps the exception, but Darkman, Total Recall, Robocop and The Untouchables were all from the same school of downright mediocre and something of a missed opportunity considering the quality of the licences involved. Yes, that’s right, Darkman is awesome! A tie-in with the Michael Biehn and Charlie Sheen starring Navy Seals is, however, something of a surprise. It’s not exactly a great movie in the first place, a fact borne out by the inclusion of its very own joke in Kevin Smith’s wonderful Clerks (close, but it’s not 37 d*cks). So, obviously Navy Seals is going to prove the inverse rule – the film sucks, so the game will be brilliant, right? Well, one can but hope.

Navy Seals puts you in charge of five of the elite fighting unit as they undertake counter-offensive missions in the Gulf of Oman and Beirut, spread across eight levels. Each stage generally consists of dodging or taking down terrorists guarding a stash of stolen US stinger missiles. The key is to find these missile crates and plant detonators on them within a tightly contested time limit. Fail to set all the detonators in time or lose all five Seals (or lives as each represent) then it is game over, although progress can be maintained using the three arcade style continues available. Various weapons caches help the Seals in this endeavour providing more excessive fire-power than the standard pistol equipped at the start of each level. This includes the likes of handy flamethrowers and grenade launchers, albeit with limited ammo, to make mince-meat out of enemies. The Seals also have some handy climbing and crawling skills and can hang from rafters, which leads to some neat takedowns of the otherwise clueless terrorists.

A good eye can net you a lovely American-themed bureau with clock

The Games Police have put Navy Seals in here with The Sniper 2 and E.T.

So, Navy Seals is fairly standard run-and-gun guff. What prevents it from being memorable bobbins, however, is a distinct lack of creative input, clumsy implementation and several cases of stupid that virtually cripples the game. I know that’s really no different to the movie, but well I’d hoped for more across a different medium. These problems all seem to stem from one issue that has confounded most movie tie-ins since the concept was first established – the rush to release so it coincides with the movie’s cinema run. Given time to invest and create ideas, Navy Seals could probably have been so much more.

This can initially be seen in the sound and graphics. Audio caters with a lively theme tune, but no in-game music just serves to highlight the bog-standard nature of the sound effects, The death scream of the Seals is a particularly ‘meh’ highlight. Functional rather than anything to celebrate, weapon effects for various machine-gun types barely get beyond the same unoriginal and dull pea-shooter pixel effect. This is compounded by tired looking backdrops, which really do nothing to flatter the Amiga’s available chipset, and stodgy animation on the player avatar. It seems a few frames have been skipped to speed things up, but all this does is make each Seal move like an overweight night-club bouncer especially when climbing ladders or attempting to bound over oil barrels. Perhaps this is the reason why most enemies in the game are static morons. Where they do move, uncomplicated backwards and forwards routines are deployed. Not exactly a challenge to get around!That is not to say Navy Seals is unchallenging though. One shot kills mean a degree of caution is required and a tough time limit ensures each level is relatively demanding to get through. Yet the timer exists purely to cover-up inadequacies elsewhere in the game design. Level maps remain a straightforward convention, even with horizontal and vertical scrolling making them larger in content than a simple left-to-right design. Once the stingers are located and enemy movement patterns (when they bother to move) are worked out getting around each map is pretty much platforming by numbers. Without the time-limit Navy Seals would be a cake-walk.

This beautiful fire-lighter was another great find in this quaint antique store

Anyone who approaches the bureau WILL DIE!

Any challenge derived from the timer, though, is compromised by three design elements that make you want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon. This moves Navy Seals away from being a half-decent challenge and into the realms of the unfair. Firstly, the controls are not sufficiently precise enough, leading to your Seals making the occasional inexplicable and untimely pratfall. Combined with the ropey animation this makes each stage a bit of a tedious chug to get though. Secondly, enemies are smart enough to pick off the Seals by firing diagonally. Is this specially trained military unit also capable of firing diagonally? Are. They. B*llocks! Thirdly, and perhaps even more careless oversight considering the Special Forces nature of the Navy Seals, is that they can barely take a short fall without dislocating their knee in half. Jump from a couple of barrels high to the floor below and expect to take excessive damage. Hardly the calling sign of hardy, well-trained athletes – dodge bullets and the one shot kill mechanics magnificently, only to lose all your men via several small jumps that are easily survivable! Stupid, stupid, stupid game.The jumping dynamics will get on your moobs rather quickly, and soon you will avoid doing any jumping at all. Seeing as the game requires a fair amount of jumping in order to beat the timer, it’s unlikely you will stay engaged long enough than to see through the third stage before throwing the disc across the room in a fit of furious anger. The broken mechanics mean Navy Seals ends up being about as much fun as taking a taxi ride with Katie Hopkins as the driver. And that consigns Navy Seals into the bin of forgettable gaming dirge from the past sufficiently enough. At a time when Turrican and Super Metroid were showing just what could be done with platform shooters, Navy Seals’ shoddy implementation was already antiquated on release in 1991. That it also featured a rather large element of stupid is totally unforgivable – Navy Seals remains possibly the worst Ocean movie tie-in you’re likely to encounter on the Amiga. Avoid!